50 years ago: Ali Summit in Cleveland with Jim Brown, others shows how landscape has changed in sports

Dan McGrawJun 4, 2017

Thinking back on what was happening in the United States 50 years ago is often difficult to put in perspective. The 1960s encompassed so many different dynamics and movements — civil rights across many spectrums, religious freedom, the war in Vietnam, racial unrest, poverty in the urban slums, economic fairness — that it is sometimes difficult to figure out which side was right and which was wrong in the whole equation.

But 50 years ago today — on June 4, 1967 — there was a meeting of superstar athletes in Cleveland that was about many of those issues, deciding whether to back Muhammad Ali in his refusal to obey his draft calling and fight in Vietnam. He was 24 years old, had converted to Islam and was no longer Cassius Clay. He was the 1960 Olympic gold medal heavyweight winner and was being stripped of his heavyweight boxing championship for refusing to serve in the U.S. Army. This all happened at the end of April 1967; a month later he was in Cleveland defending his thinking on all this.

Ali wanted to meet with the top black athletes in the country to explain he was not fighting because of his religion and that his reasoning of “I ain’t got no quarrel with those Vietcong” was legal and logical. He contacted former Browns running back Jim Brown (who had retired with some controversy the year before) and asked him for advice. Brown decided to assemble the nation’s top black athletes so Ali could explain his reasoning to them and see if they would back him up.